This article critically assesses the work of the UN Special Representative for Business and Human Rights (SRSG) John Ruggie. The article adopts a normative perspective on the issue. Thus, its critique is derived from the standpoint of ethics. The SRSG was instrumental in shifting the burden of proof to those who deny corporate human rights responsibilities. This achievement, however, is relativized by the very restrictive interpretation of such responsibilities, both in terms of their scope as well as the normative force assigned to them. Finally, the article explores and analyzes the SRSG's relative reluctance to address and engage with ethical categories more explicitly. It outlines the dangers and blind spots that may result from this reluctance and reflects on the role that ethics can, and perhaps should, play in the broader debate on business and human rights.
This brief response to Smith focuses on his distinction between moral and political responsibility in general and how it relates to human rights in particular. It argues that the notion of political responsibility as is used in the debate on political CSR often does not exclude morality but is based on it.
Neoliberal globalization has not yielded the results it promised; global inequality has risen, poverty and hunger are still prevailing in large parts of this world. If this devastating situation shall be improved, economists must talk less about economic growth and more about people's rights. The use of the language of rights will be key for making the economy work more in favor of the least advantaged in this world. Not only will it provide us with the vocabulary necessary to reframe such pressing global problems and to find adequate economic solutions; it will also deliver the basis for deriving according duties and duty-bearers - the language of rights is congruent with the language of justice and as such it is inevitably and at the same time the language of obligations. The language of obligations exposes the multinational corporation as one of the main agents of justice in the global economy. Taking distributive justice as a starting point for reflection, a consistent derivation of the multinational's moral obligations must focus on capabilities rather than on causality. This will lead to a shift from merely passive to active duties and accordingly to a stronger emphasis on the corporation's contribution to the realization of positive rights.
In his widely influential human rights framework, the former special representative for business and human rights, John Ruggie, establishes a responsibility to respect human rights for all corporations. He does so based on an instrumental account of corporate responsibility. In this paper I will systematically explore and expose the conceptual flaws underlying such instrumental arguments, specifically when invoked in connection with human rights responsibility. I will outline four relevant situations, which stake out the scope of such business case arguments in the context of
human rights. Based on the analysis of those four situations, I will argue that Ruggie's instrumental defense of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights fails. While a genuinely moral argument in favor of corporate human rights responsibility would be more plausible, it implies corporate responsibilities beyond merely respecting human rights and thus challenges the framework's rigid division of responsibility between corporation and state.
